♥ This is an incredible essay. Another aspect of how people devalue women's work: they say it's not physically intensive. My great-aunt told me this story of when her husband fell in the shower (he had polio when he was in his twenties, so he can't move much) and because she has severe arthritis and is ill in other ways, she couldn't lift him. So she called their home care nurses (they usually have about a year of training and experience in Sweden, they don't have nursing degrees), and three short and skinny girls showed up and got him lifted and back into bed. They say women's work isn't physically intensive.
So about 20 years ago, when i was 19, women's studies 201 class in college. The teacher asks when you think of a working woman who or maybe what do you think of. And I said "My Mom." She has her own business making dolls at the time, still does just not making dolls.
And this was a BIG DEAL It kind of derailed the teacher a bit from the point she was making, I think? .
Oh I love this. Another reason nursing is devalued is because people think that somehow, the more degrees you accumulate, the smarter you must be. Skilled work isn't valued the way it is anymore.
I can't tell you how glad I am to read this essay. I just spent two and a half years working as the unit secretary on at my local hospital and man, you sketched out the occupational frustrations and inequalities with such clarity. I was nodding along the entire time with this.
If she and her ilk would stop brain-washing nursing students into thinking that bedside nursing wasn't good enough for them, new graduate nurses might stay longer than a year.
EXACTLY. Between that and the amount of disrespect nurses get, it's little wonder that the turnover rate's so high. It's so damn depressing to see capable and determined young nurses getting ground down by their profession so quickly.
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And this was a BIG DEAL It kind of derailed the teacher a bit from the point she was making, I think? .
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If she and her ilk would stop brain-washing nursing students into thinking that bedside nursing wasn't good enough for them, new graduate nurses might stay longer than a year.
EXACTLY. Between that and the amount of disrespect nurses get, it's little wonder that the turnover rate's so high. It's so damn depressing to see capable and determined young nurses getting ground down by their profession so quickly.
Thank you so much for writing this.
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